Presentation of Colors Virginia State Police Honor Guard National Anthem Lynsey Strohminger, Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services Opening Remarks Division Director Lindsay Burton, Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services Director Ashaki McNeil, Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services Attorney General Jay Jones, Office of the Attorney General Chief Mark Talbot, Norfolk Police Department Colonel Jeffrey S. Katz, Virginia State Police
This session outlines the FBI’s response to the January 1, 2025 violent extremist attack in New Orleans. It highlights the rapid activation of the Crisis Response Plan, coordination with local, state, and federal partners, and the FBI’s assumption of lead investigative authority once the attack was determined to be ISIS‑inspired.Attendees will learn how more than two hundred personnel were deployed within 24 hours, how advanced investigative techniques and international partnerships shaped the case, and how an ISIS‑affiliated individual overseas was identified and arrested with support from Iraqi authorities.The session concludes with an overview of ongoing investigative efforts and the critical role of interagencycollaboration throughout the operation.
This session will provide an overview of the presenters’ experiences in building effective partnerships between law enforcement and community-based organizations in Portsmouth.
The justice system depends on evidence. Generative AI now challenges the reliability of that evidence while simultaneously offering powerful new investigative capabilities. For violent crime investigators and prosecutors, the stakes are immediate and profound. This keynote introduces a three-dimensional framework for understanding AI: capabilities, tools, and applications. It examines how synthetic media, AI-generated communications, automated analysis systems, and algorithmic bias affect search decisions, digital evidence collection, forensic interpretation, charging determinations, and courtroom credibility. Attendees will gain practical strategies to identify AI-driven risks, avoid automation bias, maintain evidentiary integrity, and ensure that emerging technology strengthens justice rather than undermining it.
This session will cover various criminal justice trends, including violent crime and gun violence, and will identify online sources for data on crimes, drugs, and more in Virginia.
The City of Norfolk has seen a decrease in homicides and gun violence since 2023. This hour-long discussion summarizes the principles and practices necessary to achieve sustainable reductions in violence, providing an actionable pathway toward safer communities.
Sex trafficking occurs daily across Virginia, with traffickers targeting individuals with vulnerabilities and exploiting them for profit. While much attention is rightly focused on traffickers and survivors, far less is understood about the role of buyers in sustaining this system. Sex trafficking operates within a framework of supply and demand—without demand, exploitation would not be profitable. This presentation examines the critical role buyers play in perpetuating trafficking. It explores emerging insights into buyer behavior, including patterns of coercion, violence, and abuse that directly contribute to victim harm. The session will also address strategies communities can implement to disrupt demand, hold buyers accountable, and reduce the conditions that allow trafficking to persist.
State Trafficking Response Coordinator, Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services
McKayla Burnett is the State Trafficking Response Coordinator at the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services. She is responsible for coordinating statewide efforts to identify and respond to victims of human trafficking. McKayla has worked in victim services since 2015... Read More →
There are more cellular devices in the world than people. Are we maximizing all this data to its fullest? Do other agencies hold intelligence that could solve our case? How do we overcome the siloing of this information? This presentation will explore these questions and more.
This presentation examines how traditional physical security models—built around fixed perimeters, access control, and ground-based threats—are increasingly ineffective against the rapid evolution of small unmanned aerial systems (sUAS). It explores how commercially available drones have transformed the threat landscape by enabling low-cost, highly adaptable aerial surveillance and strike capabilities that bypass conventional defenses. Drawing on recent operational examples and emerging trends, the session highlights critical vulnerabilities across military installations, critical infrastructure, and domestic security environments. Participants will gain insight into the operational characteristics of sUAS, the gaps in current detection and response frameworks, and the growing need for integrated counter-UAS (C-UAS) strategies. The presentation emphasizes layered defense approaches, including sensor fusion, electronic warfare considerations, and interagency coordination, to address these challenges.
Engaging Leadership: Building Relationships and Resiliency to Overcome Adversity is a program that supports and inspires an organization’s members to go that extra step and connect with those people and places within their areas of influence, and support resiliency within the organization and your personnel, all while keeping an eye on the future and developing personnel to step up and take the reins when their time comes. People, places, the things they do, and the times they do them. These simple benchmarks can help street officers know their beat and effectively police their areas of responsibility. They are also the same four points of focus that can help senior and executive level leaders guide their agencies in a manner that promotes professionalism, attentiveness to the community, and officer morale and resiliency.
In June of 2023, a group proclaiming themselves as the Eurocell Swatting Group targeted Jewish, LGBTQ, and African American gathering centers via suicide hotlines and would threaten mass shootings and bombings. An extensive investigation involving the Federal Bureau of Investigation, local law enforcement, and the Anti-Defamation League revealed five subjects, two of whom were juveniles living in California. During this process, suspects exhibited multiple warning behaviors including identification, fixation, and pathway behaviors. We attempted to trace the path from what seems to be a “normal” existence, down the rabbit hole of internet radicalization, to committing hate crimes and showing all the threat signs of mass violence being their next step. Threat management language focusing on the pathway was utilized to obtain search warrants and other legal processes to begin enforcement before any kind of mass violence was perpetuated. This presentation explores radicalization, pathway behavior, enforcement options, and how to use threat management tools to prevent mass violence events.
